


Only Way to Be Sure

by seren_ccd



Category: Alien Quadrilogy (Movies), Alien Series
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-17
Updated: 2020-12-17
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:47:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28134921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seren_ccd/pseuds/seren_ccd
Summary: “So, you going to tell me what happened to Bishop?” Hicks asks as Ripley removes a layer of bandages. “Did he offer you cornbread again?” Post-Aliens. (Aliens 3? What Aliens 3? Did they make an Aliens?)
Relationships: Dwayne Hicks/Ellen Ripley
Comments: 19
Kudos: 90
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Only Way to Be Sure

**Author's Note:**

  * For [leigh57](https://archiveofourown.org/users/leigh57/gifts).



> I hope you enjoy! Massive thanks to my lovely beta!

Ripley blinks. Her vision swims, but only for a moment. All things being equal, waking up from hypersleep is never exactly fantastic, but it’s come a long way in those 57 years she was out.

She breathes in and out slowly, then the adrenaline sets in. Why the hell is she awake? She whips her head to the side, but only sees Newt breathing steadily in her pod.

“Hey,” a soft voice calls. “We’re fine, Ripley. We’re okay.”

Ripley looks over and sees Hicks, bare-chested, just like that first morning, but still wrapped up in bandages. His good eye’s fixed on her and he manages a small smile.

“Ease down?” she says, her voice rough and quiet.

“Yeah,” he nods. “Ease down.” He shifts. “Probably didn’t need to wake you, but this stuff,” he shrugs his bandaged shoulder and tilts his head, “needs changing. The system woke me up for it.” He looks her in the eyes. “Also figured you wanted to figure out what you wanted to do next.”

Ripley pauses. Next? Right. There’s a next. She hadn’t really considered “next” when she put them all into hypersleep. She’d been too exhausted and wrung out. Sleep was the only thing on her mind. 

But Hicks is right. “Next” needs dealing with.

With a deep breath, she gets out of her pod. “Yeah,” she said wincing at the cold floor. “Next.” 

She glances down at Newt and weighs the idea of waking her up too, but decides to let her sleep. She presses two fingers to the little girl’s pod and smiles.

Then she looks to Hicks who’s grimacing and pulling at the bandage on his face.

“Hey,” she said. He stops and looks at her. “Thanks for waking me.”

Hicks just nods. “Anytime. Besides, it’s a purely selfish move. I’m useless with one hand.”

Ripley chuckles and doubts that this man has a single useless bone in his body, but she just says, “Let’s go to medbay. And where’s the coffee?”

* * *

After pulling on her extra jumpsuit and shoes, downing a very large cup of coffee and some tasteless food, Hicks is perched on a table in medbay while Ripley removes his bandages. Their second cups of coffee and pack of cigarettes close by.

“So, you going to tell me what happened to Bishop?” Hicks asks as Ripley unwinds a layer of bandages from his shoulder. “Did he offer you cornbread again?”

She chuckles. “Not exactly.”

“He knocked me out,” Hicks says ducking to meet her eyes. “I didn’t want him to, but one minute I was watching the clock and the next, I’m waking up in stasis.”

“It’s okay,” Ripley says gently tugging at where the bandage is applied directly to his wounds. 

“It’s not,” Hicks counters his voice firm.

Ripley pauses to meet his eyes. A corner of her mouth quirks up. “We made it, Hicks. It’s okay.”

“Yeah,” he breathes as she pulls the bandage all the way off and they both stare at mess of burns on his skin. “Well, there goes my beauty pageant plans.”

“Could be worse,” she says.

“True that.” He hands her the antibiotic gel. “So. Bishop.”

“He got us off the platform before it blew,” Ripley says carefully applying the viscous gel. “We got back here.” She pauses. “So did the queen.”

Hicks’ good eyebrow rises. “Queen?”

“Yeah,” Ripley breathes and she can almost smell the queen in the room. Acidic and insect and vicious. 

Hicks nods. “So we were right. There’s a big mama.”

“Was,” Ripley says firmly meeting his eyes. “There _was_ a big mama.”

A very slow smile spreads across his face. “Well, tell me everything.”

So she does. She tells him everything from Bishop getting ripped apart from fighting the queen with the loader, to how close they all came to flying out into space.

Hicks watches her the entire time and she’s struck by how well he listens. She knew from the beginning that this man was no ordinary military grunt, that there was something much deeper here. There’s a steadiness he just radiates that she’s not used to. 

A tiny voice in the back of her head cautions her against getting used to it.

She ignores it and tells her story.

At the end, Hicks just looks at her; and then just says, “Fuckin’ A.”

Ripley laughs. Actually laughs. Not a tense chuckle, but a laugh that parts her lips and shows her teeth.

Hicks just grins.

“Yeah,” she says reaching for her coffee and leaning back. “That about sums it up.”

“You’ve racked up a pretty big bill,” he says. “Company won’t like that.”

“No,” she says softly, her brow furrowing. “They won’t.”

In fact, Ripley’s extremely sure that once they find out, the consequences will be more severe than just stripping her of her pilot license. She has a feeling they’ll bring the hammer down _hard_. She looks in the direction of the stasis pods where Newt is still sleeping away, hopefully dreaming of pleasant and quiet things. Not monsters with big teeth. Or wolves in Company suits.

“Do you have any family?” she asks turning back to Hicks who’s busy lighting a cigarette. “And do you have any more of those?”

He hands her the crumpled pack and says, “No family, no. Well.” He frowns. “I’ve got an older brother out there, somewhere. Colonist out in the far reaches, but we aren’t exactly close.” He looks at her. “Why?”

“I wonder if Newt has any extended family,” she replies as she stares into middle-distance while she lights up.

“We can probably look that up,” he says slowly. 

Ripley is silent as she inhales, and when she exhales, she meets Hicks’ eye. They watch each other for a long moment before he says, “Looks like we need to change course, huh?”

“You don’t have to come with me,” she says.

He tilts his head to the side and raises that eyebrow of his. “I pressed the button as hard as you did, Ripley. In fact, I’m the grunt in charge who made the order.” He grins and she’s finding she could get used to seeing that grin. “Company is going to throw the book at me as hard as they’ll do you. Plus the military won’t be too pleased that the only one to make it out of there is a lowly corporal who didn’t have the good sense to die alongside his sergeant.”

Ripley watches as his grin falters and she imagines that the faces of his unit go through his mind. They go through hers, along with her former crew, her daughter, and even Jonesy who she hopes settled in well with the family down the hall from her apartment. She watches Hicks and knows she has no right to even hope that he’ll come with her to… Hell, she has no idea where to go. It’s been 57 years and places she remembers may not even exist anymore. She needs someone to help her navigate.

Although, if she’s completely honest with herself, (and when is she never not completely honest) she just wants him nearby. Maybe that want will fade, but she’s grown used to him being next to her. His hands at the ready to steady her, to hold her up, to slice open steel to rescue a little girl with her.

“Why the padlock?” she asks, surprising herself by actually voicing the question.

Hicks stares at her for a moment in confusion, but then his hand reaches up to his chest, as though to touch the small padlock that had adorned his armor. The padlock is gone now, of course. Melted away by acid. 

“First tour out, I didn’t say much,” he says. “Rest of the group took that to mean that I could keep a secret. So folks started talking to me. And I listened.” He shrugs and Ripley’s eyes are drawn to the mess of burns on his chest. “One morning, it was just there. On my armor.” He shrugs again. “Kinda liked it, so I left it.”

She smiles a little and nods. “It suited you.”

“Thanks,” he says with a light chuckle and he pauses, before saying, “Whatever you’re thinking of doing…I’m in.”

As they always seem to do, Ripley’s eyes meet his and the moment stretches, long and taut and charged with all sorts of unnamed emotions and maybe a few that she could place a name to but isn’t ready to…yet.

“Who says I’m thinking anything?” she says breaking their gaze and starting in on the bandages that cover his face.

Hicks just huffs a little but his hand comes to rest on her curve of her hip as she steps in closer to unwind the bandages and the warmth of it energizes her.

“The Company doesn’t like to lose their assets,” he says. “Might spend a lot of time looking over our shoulders.”

“I have a feeling we’ll be doing that anyway.”

“Yeah.” He breathes out and she removes the last of the bandages. His injured eye blinks at the light and he winces. 

“Can you see anything out of it?” she asks.

“Enough to aim,” he says and he tentatively touches his temple. “Not pretty, is it?”

“I’ve seen worse,” she says as she nudges his hand out of the way to apply the gel. The skin under her fingers is rough but his gaze on her is anything but.

“Ellen,” he says and she stops, her fingertips rest on his cheek, and she looks at him. “I mean it. I’m in. Wherever you’re going next…I’m in. You want to take Newt and whatever’s left of Bishop and see how far we get…I’m in. All the way.”

Her breath hitches and she has to hide how much his words strike her. Something behind her ribcage flutters, but it’s not fear that fills her, it’s warmth. And something else. Something thrilling.

“Good,” she says. “I could use a partner.”

His hand flexes on her hip and he nods. “So could I.”

Her lips twitch into a smile as she finishes coating his burns. His hand stays on her hip.


End file.
